History of Film - The Silent Era

The Silent Era

Initially, there were technical difficulties in synchronizing images with sound. It was clear that Edison originally intended to create a sound film system, which would not gain worldwide recognition until the release of "The Jazz Singer" in 1927. However, there was still significant interest in motion pictures for films to be produced without sound. This is referred to as the silent era of film. However, to enhance the viewers' experience, silent films were commonly accompanied by live musicians and sometimes sound effects and even commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist. In most countries, intertitles came to be used to provide dialogue and narration for the film, thus dispensing with narrators, but in Japanese cinema human narration remained popular throughout the silent era. The technical problems were resolved by 1923.

Illustrated songs were a notable exception to this trend that began in 1894 in vaudeville houses and persisted as late as the late 1930s in film theaters. Live performance or sound recordings were paired with hand-colored glass slides projected through stereopticons and similar devices. In this way, song narrative was illustrated through a series of slides whose changes were simultaneous with the narrative development. The main purpose of illustrated songs was to encourage sheet music sales, and they were highly successful with sales reaching into the millions for a single song. Later, with the birth of film, illustrated songs were used as filler material preceding films and during reel changes.